Singing Back-Up
by Walking Happy Meal
Summary: Dawn never got a chance to sing her solo. Cue: big weepy angst.


Singing Back-Up 1/1   
By The Walking Happy Meal (walkinghappymeal[at]rinkworks[dot]com)   
http://www.geocities.com/walkinghappymeal/   
Rated PG   
Spoilers up to 'Once More With Feeling'   
Archival by permission only   
  
  
  
She isn't sure who she is anymore.   
  
She stands in front of the mirror and tries on outfit after outfit,   
but none of them seems right and her bed is soon covered in an   
angrily flung succession of skirts, blouses, jeans and jackets.   
  
In front of the mirror, various Dawns are assembled. Hippy Dawn, Punk   
Dawn, Slut Dawn, Preppy Dawn, Goth Dawn and Cheerleader Dawn. Dawn   
after Dawn until she feels more like a Dress-Up Doll than anything   
else.   
  
And still none of them is right.   
  
She's assembling Chic Dawn, complete with a pair of Anya's earrings   
from her jewellery box, when it occurs to her that she never got a   
chance to finish her solo.   
  
Which is typical.   
  
She knows that her sister has some primo grade issues at the moment,   
which is why she's not saying anything to anybody about her own, but   
she can't help the cold little voice in a corner of her brain telling   
her that she's been upstaged by her big sister. Again.   
  
"Does anybody even notice?   
"Does anybody even care?"   
  
She tries her best, but her voice is nervous and uncertain now. The   
spell that would have let her spill out her problems in some   
semblance of an order, maybe even enough to solve them, is gone for   
good. She can't even vocalise her troubles now, let alone make them   
rhyme.   
  
She can hear Willow and Tara arguing in the next room. Something   
about a bramble. She wonders briefly if they'd finally notice   
something was up if she went in and told Willow that whatever they   
were arguing about, was probably in her jewellery box, along with   
Tara's Grandmother's Doll's-Eye crystal and a lot more of their   
stuff. She briefly considers confessing to them that she was stealing   
things because pretty much her entire life so far has been dictated   
by somebody else and she has no idea who she really is, now that   
she's in charge of herself.   
  
The already raised voices next door get even louder and she gives up   
on the idea of asking for help and goes to lie on her bed with   
pillows over her ears and brood over her origins instead.   
  
Occasionally it was comforting. When Kirsty had been dissing her   
extreme lack of love life, Dawn had wanted to snap back that she was   
designed by *monks*, so she was hardly her fault that she wasn't as   
skanky a ho as Kirsty, right?   
  
Mostly though, it was scary. All the things she'd achieved: the   
swimming trophies, the perfect grades; they weren't hers at all and   
they'd all seemed to melt away when she was finally in a position to   
achieve something in her own right. All she's achieved as her true   
self, it seems, is a barely averted apocalypse, a temporarily dead   
sister and a string of petty thefts.   
  
Her eyes stray guiltily to her jewellery box.   
  
Well why not? She could be anything, why not a thief? She could be a   
junkie too for that matter, or a whore, or in a gang. Nobody could   
say that `girls like her didn't do that sort of thing', because there   
were no girls like her and there never had been and never would be.   
  
A tear trickles down her face as she slowly tidies away the clothes   
on the bed.   
  
She doesn't begrudge Buffy her celestial revelations, but she   
sometimes wonders if her sister's life will ever take a long enough   
break from being dramatic that there will be enough time for Dawn's   
solo. A time when she can stop singing back-up for her sister and get   
the love and support that she wants so badly.   
  
It needn't be Buffy. She just wants half an hour with somebody she   
can talk to, that she can tell about the thefts and the sneaky dates   
with vampires and the cuts she's taken to making on her arms, not deep   
and not often but...   
  
She just wants somebody she can pour it all out to, who will hug her   
at the end instead of scolding her. Somebody to tell her they love   
her and make it all better.   
  
In other words, she wants her mother.   
  
And she goes over to her closet and from the bottom, she pulls out a   
smelly blue bathrobe and she hugs it tightly, as the rest of her   
tears fall. 


End file.
